When surfing the internet and coming across interesting articles on just about any topic, it is essential for the maintenance of clear, rational thinking that the surfer attempt to gain some conception of the person who created the relevant web-site.

With that in mind, I'd like to point out that the author of the page referenced in this thread, Dr. Robert A. Hermann, is an advocate of Intelligent Design and his host site includes many articles which indicate that he is not entirely rigorous in his thinking where a physics issue may be contrary to his faith.

While this does not mean that Dr Hermann might not be at least partially right in saying that there are valid arguments as to why the E=mc^2 equation could be more widely attributed than to just Einstein, the document should be read in full knowledge of the context in which Dr Hermann places those arguments. Basically, the credibility of Dr Hermann's article is highly questionable.

For my money, anyone who is looking for a General Grand Unified Theory based on Genesis 1-8 is going to have to be selective about what science he will accept and what he will attempt to refute irrespective of the evidence for or against.

If anyone out there knows for sure whether Dr Hermann's article is pure historical revisionism or not, I would be interested to know.

E=mc^2 is not from Einstein. The formula was obtained by several people mainly Poincaré. The special version of relativity is not from Einstein. It is from Poincaré and Lorentz. This is the reason that modern historians provide no credibility to physicists' claim that was Einstein.

Whittaker bible on history already said that Einstein plyed no reole on the formulation of special relativity.

Moreover, it would be highlighted that Einstein famous article of 1905 contains NONE reference to previous work by others, doing Einstein a "plagiarist".

More information on http://canonicalscience.blogspot.com/2005/08/what-is-history-of-relativity-theory.html [Broken]

Neopolitan, this kind of data is of course used by people with strange ideas like Dr Hermann but he is providing to you references to work.

It is very easy critique an author instead of the argument of that author. And note that the claim of E=mc^2 is not from Einstein is also supported by physicists like Hawking who said that none of formulas of Albert Einstein is from him. Hawking admits that GR was formulated by Hilbert.

Do you know why Einstein newer received the Nobel Prize for "his" work on special relativity?

E=mc^2 is not from Einstein. The formula was obtained by several people mainly Poincaré. The special version of relativity is not from Einstein. It is from Poincaré and Lorentz. This is the reason that modern historians provide no credibility to physicists' claim that was Einstein.

Whittaker bible on history already said that Einstein plyed no reole on the formulation of special relativity.

Moreover, it would be highlighted that Einstein famous article of 1905 contains NONE reference to previous work by others, doing Einstein a "plagiarist".

More information on http://canonicalscience.blogspot.com/2005/08/what-is-history-of-relativity-theory.html [Broken]

Neopolitan, this kind of data is of course used by people with strange ideas like Dr Hermann but he is providing to you references to work.

It is very easy critique an author instead of the argument of that author. And note that the claim of E=mc^2 is not from Einstein is also supported by physicists like Hawking who said that none of formulas of Albert Einstein is from him. Hawking admits that GR was formulated by Hilbert.

Do you know why Einstein newer received the Nobel Prize for "his" work on special relativity?

This is trashy. Whittaker has no evidence for his claim (I read and studied his book years ago) and he is not regarded as authoritative on this issue. Just quoting some famous name, as you tend to do, without noting their parti pris is not good discourse. Whittaker had professional issues with Eddington and transferred his animus to Einstein. He also, as an expert on partial differential equations, tried to find alternatives to relativity, something I believe you are into too, with your Canonical science.

The issue of Einstein and the discovery have been rehearsed on these boards several times. In brief:

Poincare talked a good game but didn't publish any derivations until after Einstein did.

Lorentz had his transofrmations in the 1890's but didn't think of them as physical. And Lorentz WAS cited by Einstein.

Various people suggested [tex]\frac {1}{\sqrt{1- \frac{v^2}{c^2}}}[/tex] in the nineteenth century as an explanation for Michelson Morley but they didn't give any true physical account of where it came from (with a partiial exception for Voigt).

Likewise the expression [tex]e = mc^2[/tex] has been found in a couple of nineteenth century documents, but not AFAIK with any correct physical explanation, whereas Einsten's paper on the subject, also in 1905, was a straight derivation from relativistic premises.

This is trashy. Whittaker has no evidence for his claim (I read and studied his book years ago) and he is not regarded as authoritative on this issue. Just quoting some famous name, as you tend to do, without noting their parti pris is not good discourse. Whittaker had professional issues with Eddington and transferred his animus to Einstein. He also, as an expert on partial differential equations, tried to find alternatives to relativity, something I believe you are into too, with your Canonical science.

The issue of Einstein and the discovery have been rehearsed on these boards several times. In brief:

Poincare talked a good game but didn't publish any derivations until after Einstein did.

Lorentz had his transofrmations in the 1890's but didn't think of them as physical. And Lorentz WAS cited by Einstein.

Various people suggested [tex]\frac {1}{\sqrt{1- \frac{v^2}{c^2}}}[/tex] in the nineteenth century as an explanation for Michelson Morley but they didn't give any true physical account of where it came from (with a partiial exception for Voigt).

Likewise the expression [tex]e = mc^2[/tex] has been found in a couple of nineteenth century documents, but not AFAIK with any correct physical explanation, whereas Einsten's paper on the subject, also in 1905, was a straight derivation from relativistic premises.

Yes, Whittaker has evidence, this is the reason that wrote that authoritative standard manual on the history of relativity. Historians agree with him and lot of physicists from Planck to Hawking.

The aim to attack or invalidate to anyone who do not follow the mainstraim but wrong history is irrisorious. Like your claim on canonical science (?)

"Poincare talked a good game but didn't publish any derivations until after Einstein did."

This is completely false. Poincaré published the theory of relativity before Einstein did. Moreover, Einstein said newer read to Poincaré but at least two colleagues said the contrary.

The claim of Lorentz didn't think of them as physical is another of miths. Einstein cited Lorentz as the father of Lorentz transformations but does not cited to Poincaré and did not cite that mass formula was also from Lorentz.

The theory of relativity was completely done by Poincaré. Einstein simply copied. In fact the two postulates of Einstein (1905) are exactly the two postulates of Poincaré (1904), exactly the same!!

Einsten's paper on the subject, contain an incorrect derivation of E=mc^2 as noted by Ives, Planck, Stark, and others, which imply that copied the formula.

There is also historical evidence that Einstein copied to Hilbert the equations of GR.

Yes, Whittaker has evidence, this is the reason that wrote that authoritative standard manual on the history of relativity. Historians agree with him and lot of physicists from Planck to Hawking.

So YOU say. Put up or shut up on Planck and Hawking. Citations and no excuses about you're too busy, when you always seem to have time to tell tall tales.

The aim to attack or invalidate to anyone who do not follow the mainstraim but wrong history is irrisorious. Like your claim on canonical science (?)

I don't attack everybody, but I attack people who post phony claims. I don't know what irrisorious means, but just calling names is childish.

"Poincare talked a good game but didn't publish any derivations until after Einstein did."

This is completely false. Poincaré published the theory of relativity before Einstein did. Moreover, Einstein said newer read to Poincaré but at least two colleagues said the contrary.

Give the citation. What Poincare published BEFORE EINSTEIN was just popscience talk about "physics of the future". That is NOT publishing a theory of relativity. Poincare did eventually do the math of deriving Lorentz's transformations from relativistic postulates but that paper came out AFTER Einstein's.

The claim of Lorentz didn't think of them as physical is another of miths. Einstein cited Lorentz as the father of Lorentz transformations but does not cited to Poincaré and did not cite that mass formula was also from Lorentz.

Your statement about Lorentz disagrees with what serious historians say. Give your citations for this variant. Also show in what paper Lorentz derived the mass formula.

The theory of relativity was completely done by Poincaré. Einstein simply copied. In fact the two postulates of Einstein (1905) are exactly the two postulates of Poincaré (1904), exactly the same!!

Postulates without deriving consequences do not constitute physics. Poincare's approach to relativity was then and later mathematically oriented (Poincare group) not physical. I repeat, everybody at the time, including Lorentz, saw Einstein's paper as making a new breakthrough.

Einsten's paper on the subject, contain an incorrect derivation of E=mc^2 as noted by Ives, Planck, Stark, and others, which imply that copied the formula.

Give the citations.

There is also historical evidence that Einstein copied to Hilbert the equations of GR.

This has been gone into exhaustively by the German school of science historians. I'll get links. Bottom line from careful analysis of the dates and correspondence of the two shows that Einstein finalized his field equations in 1915 before Hilbert got his action, and that Hilbert at that late period wrote to Einstein to request clarification on some points. In any case both theories were incomplete until Noether rediscovered the Bianchi identities.

Hahaha, if Einstein really did copy all these ideas, as Juan is asserting, then you sure have to give him credit for being awesome at judging which ideas to copy! Special relativity remained controversial for decades after it was published; there was no true indication that the experimental evidence would support it in 1905. Many still held to ether theories. Similarly with [tex]E=mc^2[/tex], GR, and his discoveries in quantum mechanics (would you allege Einstein "copied" his QM discoveries as well, Juan?). If Einstein copied these ideas before they were generally accepted and long before they were verified by experiment, one has to conclude that Einstein was the most brilliant copy cat in the history of physics. Furthermore, if he was so into copying, why did he give credit to those who sent him papers that hadn't been published yet? For instance, Kaluza sent Einstein a paper on incorporating EM into GR, and Einstein didn't publish Kaluza's idea as his own, even though since Kaluza's idea hadn't been published yet, that would have been a MUCH better idea to copy than Lorentz and Poincare's.

Excellent point Ellipse (not in the least because it was one I was also going to make) particularly about the fact that it took quite a while for relativity to gain the wide acceptance it does today.

Similarly, thanks selfAdjoint, it would have seemed churlish of me to point out to Juan that his canonical science efforts seem to diminish his credibility just as much as Dr. Hermann's beliefs re Intelligent Design. (Anyone in any doubt should attempt to wade through http://www.canonicalscience.com/en/others/canonicalscience.xml [Broken].)

What I would like to point out in addition is that, when you read the three page document published by Einstein in 1905 which most closely approaches the E=mc^2 equation (Does the Inertia of a Body Depend on its Energy-Content? 27 September 1905, available here), it reads as a curiosity. Einstein certainly does not assume a tone of one big-noting himself, his final comment is quite modest: "If the theory corresponds to the facts, radiation conveys inertia between the emitting and absorbing bodies."

Two other points might be salient. First, no amount of hyping of Einstein and his work makes him wrong (it doesn't make him right either, only demonstrable conformance of theory with objective reality does that). Second, just because journals are much more stringent today doesn't mean that Einstein was being underhand in his authorship - clearly Annalen der Physik did not require a raft of citations of previous work, otherwise they would not have published.

In closing, Einstein didn't have to parade around proclaiming himself to be the "father of Relativity", the scientific community as a whole - eventually - did that. And with that, he gets credit not necessarily for writing m = L/c^2 but for leading us towards a physical understanding of the equation.

neopolitan

Oh, and Juan, Einstein didn't get the Nobel for Special (or General) Relativity because he got the Nobel Prize in 1921 for his work on the photo electric effect in a paper also published in his golden year, 1905. It is said that that work was the beginning of what became quantum theory, check here for a short but interesting article on it.

You could also ask the question, why didn't Einstein get the Nobel Prize for his work on Brownian motion which basically finally proved the existence of molecules (and thus atoms) by making testable predictions which were shown to be accurate by Jean Baptiste Perrin - who won the Nobel Prize in 1926. (Article here .)

After of a fabulous weekend, nothing more interesting that couple of replies from so remarkable writers, Super Mentors, and the rest. World is imperfect.

selfAdjoint said:

So YOU say. Put up or shut up on Planck and Hawking. Citations and no excuses about you're too busy, when you always seem to have time to tell tall tales.

No! Whittaker is an authority. His book was published by the American Institute of Physics and as editors of the volume one find to J. A. Wheeler, S. R. Weart, Brush, and Holton between others.

If by citations and references, you are talking of items that look like [h] with h a number. There are 17 of them on the link that, already, I provided. See also references cited therein. Important note: some of those works do not use the notation [h] for references; please do not think that they have no references!

selfAdjoint said:

I don't attack everybody, but I attack people who post phony claims. I don't know what irrisorious means, but just calling names is childish.

As a “super master” or “super mentor” or any, you would focus on arguments before on people. Still on your bizarre claim on Canonical science, I would say the same that said

(?)

selfAdjoint said:

Give the citation. What Poincare published BEFORE EINSTEIN was just popscience talk about "physics of the future". That is NOT publishing a theory of relativity. Poincare did eventually do the math of deriving Lorentz's transformations from relativistic postulates but that paper came out AFTER Einstein's.

In 1904, Poincaré said in his “The principle of Relativity”.

The laws of physical phenomena must be the same for a ‘fixed’ observer as for an observer who has a uniform motion of translation relative to him: so that we have not, and cannot possibly have, any means of discerning whether we are, or are not, carried along in such a motion.

From all these results there must arise an entirely new kind of dynamics, which will be characterized above all by the rule, that no velocity can exceed the velocity of light.

These are the so-called Einstein postulates, which Einstein copied from Poincaré without citing to him. I would remember to you that famous Einstein 1905 paper on SR contains none reference (that is zero [h]) to previous work by others. In the words of the Nobel laureate Born:

[Einstein's] paper 'Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Koerper' in Annalen der Physik [...] contains not a single reference to previous literature. It gives you the impression of quite a new venture. But that is, of course, as I have tried to explain, not true.

Poincaré also emphasized that Lorentz work relied on so many assumptions and shown that the LT follows from his principle of relativity of 1904. Poincaré idea was also quoted by Lorentz in 1904 (Electromagnetic phenomena in a system moving with any velocity less than that of light.) Still I think that Einstein clarified the situation (AFTER READ Poincaré and Lorentz) and this is the reason that I say the relativity theory of Poincaré, Lorentz, and others. The popular idea Einstein did all the work from zero is completely wrong, and unsustainable on historical grounds.

selfAdjoint said:

Your statement about Lorentz disagrees with what serious historians say. Give your citations for this variant. Also show in what paper Lorentz derived the mass formula.

Perhaps are you are thinking on Pais’ “old” biography with some incorrect statements? Perhaps are Corry, Renn, and Stachel serious for you? Or, perhaps, history is a rigid system and when some thing is said, it remains in time forever. About Lorentz already showed. Even offered the reference to a 1904 paper on PF time ago.

Lorentz (physicist) was working in the solving of a physical problem not in pure mathematical machinery. Lorentz said “Einstein simply postulates what we have deduced... from the equations of the electromagnetic field”. After, Lorentz worked in his incorrect molecular force hypothesis.

selfAdjoint said:

Postulates without deriving consequences do not constitute physics. Poincare's approach to relativity was then and later mathematically oriented (Poincare group) not physical. I repeat, everybody at the time, including Lorentz, saw Einstein's paper as making a new breakthrough.

All physical formulas of Einstein paper were already known, including many of their consequences. For example, the lack of simultaneity or timed delay of clocks is not from Einstein. The existence of a maximum sped due to kinetic increasing of mass, etc.

“Everybody”, excluding Planck, Born, Ives, Kaufmann... and, of course, Lorentz as already cited in two occasions. Precisely, it was Lorentz who objected the Nobel Prize was awarded to Einstein by SR.

selfAdjoint said:

Give the citations.

Already I did. There are lots of [h] and [h] inside the others [h]

selfAdjoint said:

Bottom line from careful analysis of the dates and correspondence of the two shows that Einstein finalized his field equations in 1915 before Hilbert got his action, and that Hilbert at that late period wrote to Einstein to request clarification on some points. In any case both theories were incomplete until Noether rediscovered the Bianchi identities.

1) Hilbert obtained equation of GR at least nine days before Einstein did.
2) Einstein said not the true no his letters to Hilbert
3) Hilbert obtained the Bianchi identity in 1915 before Weyl rediscovering. Again you are maintaining an old version of the history, that of Pais book.

εllipse said:

Hahaha, if Einstein really did copy all these ideas, as Juan is asserting, then you sure have to give him credit for being awesome at judging which ideas to copy! Special relativity remained controversial for decades after it was published; there was no true indication that the experimental evidence would support it in 1905. Many still held to ether theories. Similarly with [tex]E=mc^2[/tex], GR, and his discoveries in quantum mechanics (would you allege Einstein "copied" his QM discoveries as well, Juan?). If Einstein copied these ideas before they were generally accepted and long before they were verified by experiment, one has to conclude that Einstein was the most brilliant copy cat in the history of physics. Furthermore, if he was so into copying, why did he give credit to those who sent him papers that hadn't been published yet? For instance, Kaluza sent Einstein a paper on incorporating EM into GR, and Einstein didn't publish Kaluza's idea as his own, even though since Kaluza's idea hadn't been published yet, that would have been a MUCH better idea to copy than Lorentz and Poincare's.

For irrelevant guys to ask about this matters is resumed on Hahaha. To offer serious argument is more difficult.

Others (historians or people interested in it) prefer to read and publish, to debate, etc.

neopolitan said:

Excellent point Ellipse (not in the least because it was one I was also going to make) particularly about the fact that it took quite a while for relativity to gain the wide acceptance it does today.

(?)

neopolitan said:

Similarly, thanks selfAdjoint, it would have seemed churlish of me to point out to Juan that his canonical science efforts seem to diminish his credibility just as much as Dr. Hermann's beliefs re Intelligent Design. (Anyone in any doubt should attempt to wade through the canonical point of view.)

Yes, I partially agree, seeing your last post, and your emphasis in disconnected points with the thread, it is difficult to believe on intelligent design, or at least part of universe may be a flagrant error of the design. It would be especially interesting to see that part of “the canonical point of view” you dislike. It is many times more interesting read the credibility of SelfAdjoint, especially on the Entropy Vs. Life post.

neopolitan said:

What I would like to point out in addition is that, when you read the three page document published by Einstein in 1905 which most closely approaches the E=mc^2 equation (Does the Inertia of a Body Depend on its Energy-Content? 27 September 1905, available here), it reads as a curiosity. Einstein certainly does not assume a tone of one big-noting himself, his final comment is quite modest: "If the theory corresponds to the facts, radiation conveys inertia between the emitting and absorbing bodies."

(?)

neopolitan said:

Two other points might be salient. First, no amount of hyping of Einstein and his work makes him wrong (it doesn't make him right either, only demonstrable conformance of theory with objective reality does that).

(?)

neopolitan said:

Second, just because journals are much more stringent today doesn't mean that Einstein was being underhand in his authorship - clearly Annalen der Physik did not require a raft of citations of previous work, otherwise they would not have published.

Today?

(?)

neopolitan said:

In closing, Einstein didn't have to parade around proclaiming himself to be the "father of Relativity", the scientific community as a whole - eventually - did that. And with that, he gets credit not necessarily for writing m = L/c^2 but for leading us towards a physical understanding of the equation.

No! Einstein proclaimed it!

Moreover, the “whole” of scientific community has not studied the history of the field with detail only that “official” (really old) version has said. I already cited many examples of members of community that maintained contrary view to the popular versions Einstein derived SR alone...

neopolitan said:

Oh, and Juan, Einstein didn't get the Nobel for Special (or General) Relativity because he got the Nobel Prize in 1921 for his work on the photo electric effect in a paper also published in his golden year, 1905. It is said that that work was the beginning of what became quantum theory, check here for a short but interesting article on it.

Thanks by your powerful comments and additional data. I already explained why received the Nobel Prize for photoelectric instead of for SR. Has you read it?

Oh, and neopolitan, Einstein's work was important by the introduction of photons, but I thought that the beginning of quantum era was Planck 1900 previous work.

Well the Nobel committee also thought that

Professor Planck. The Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded you the Nobel Prize for 1918 in recognition of your epoch-making investigations into the quantum theory.

I Read from Brownian motion (it appears that author of that “relevant” web page cited by Neopolitan does not know the difference between atoms and molecules and believes that Dalton theory was a suggestion :rofl:)

... a century before Einstein, the great chemist John Dalton had suggested that all chemicals were made of tiny invisible molecules, which in turn were made of even tinier atoms. The problem was that there was no proof of their existence, until Einstein looked into the problem of Brownian motion.

Einstein's work was important but “there was no proof of their existence, until Einstein looked into” is a “bit” exaggerated...

Perrin offered and unambiguous experimental proof of existence of molecules thanks to modern experimental laboratory material, which was unavailable in the past. Avogadro constant and other things were computed in the past with imperfect methods...

It is difficult to believe on the absoluteness of “there was no [any] proof of their existence” in above link after one knows of the Karlsruhe Congress of 1860, the chemical scale of atomic weights, Loschmidt’s 1865 article titled On the Size of the Air Molecules, Maxwell kinetic work on Avogadro constant, etc.

you seem obsessed with denigrating Einstein's efforts, even those for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize - which you seem to think should have been awarded to Planck. Note that Planck was actually awarded the 1918 Nobel Prize for his discovery of "energy quanta", not for what we now call quantum theory, the term used by by the President of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences was the quantum theory. It might sound like semantics, but it does make a difference, and Planck's contribution to quantum theory is certainly not in any doubt - see here for the transcript of Planck's presentation speech and also here and here for historical notes on quantum theory which indicate that the foundations of quantum theory were still being laid in the mid 1920s.

Of course, in this discussion, we are overlooking all the other prizes that Einstein was awarded but that seems to be of little import since I am sure you have arguments as to why he should not have received those accolades either.

Since your objective seems painfully clear, and you do not seem to be swayed at all by credible evidence or patient discussion, I see little point in discussing this issue further and hereby withdraw from this thread.

you seem obsessed with denigrating Einstein's efforts, even those for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize - which you seem to think should have been awarded to Planck. Note that Planck was actually awarded the 1918 Nobel Prize for his discovery of "energy quanta", not for what we now call quantum theory, the term used by by the President of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences was the quantum theory. It might sound like semantics, but it does make a difference, and Planck's contribution to quantum theory is certainly not in any doubt - see here for the transcript of Planck's presentation speech and also here and here for historical notes on quantum theory which indicate that the foundations of quantum theory were still being laid in the mid 1920s.

Of course, in this discussion, we are overlooking all the other prizes that Einstein was awarded but that seems to be of little import since I am sure you have arguments as to why he should not have received those accolades either.

Since your objective seems painfully clear, and you do not seem to be swayed at all by credible evidence or patient discussion, I see little point in discussing this issue further and hereby withdraw from this thread.

neopolitan

Your manipulation of data is atonishing. I respect Einstein and valuate his efforts in correct measure, but I do not "highlight" any as you appears to like.

I already said that his work on photoelectric was good. But you claimed that was the beggining of quantum theory.

neopolitan said:

Oh, and Juan, Einstein didn't get the Nobel for Special (or General) Relativity because he got the Nobel Prize in 1921 for his work on the photo electric effect in a paper also published in his golden year, 1905. It is said that that work was the beginning of what became quantum theory

When the begining of quantum theory was previous Planck theory of quanta. This is standard history but you appear to ignore it.

Your two above links on history (both wolfram and the Wiki) say that the beggining of quantum theory was PLanck work. That was i said

When talking about quantum theory one ALWAYS splits between "old" and "new" QT, both Planck and Einstein belong to old or previous episode. Your appeal to 1920 is simply stupid because that refers to new quantum theory.

I also explained why Einstein received the Nobel prize for the photoelectric instead of for SR.

I remark again since you do not read my posts, that i critiqued your false claim that Einstein's photoelectric paper was THE begining of quantum theory. Your appears to ignore that Einstein newer accepted QM.

It is really interesting that you provide none evidence or references (MODERN) for your claims on the primacy of Einstein formulations. Only links to websites of people that experience difficulties on the difference between molecule and atom or theory and suggestion.

You are open to enter or leave the post, but if you do claim, do good claims and support them, not using the chidhish arguments that you have used (including an attempt to questionate personal credibility of people).

And do not use links that supporting the author claim for attack to the author!!!

The interesting is that you simply ignore recent literature to modern approaches to the history of relativity that I am providing.

The last part of your post is so childish and full of prejuicies that i ignore it.

Perhaps are you are thinking on Pais’ “old” biography with some incorrect statements? Perhaps are Corry, Renn, and Stachel serious for you? Or, perhaps, history is a rigid system and when some thing is said, it remains in time forever

Einstein Freed from Charge of Plagiarism
According to the accepted view, the mathematician David Hilbert completed General Relativity five days before Albert Einstein in November 1915. Einstein may thus have copied crucial equations of this theory from Hilbert.
Members of an international research group at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, argue in their study, published in this week's issue of Science, that it was instead Hilbert who appropriated crucial results from Einstein and then published his paper under a misleading dateline.
Albert Einstein submitted his conclusive paper on General Relativity on 25 November 1915. David Hilbert, one of the most eminent mathematicians of the 20th century, published a paper in March 1916 which also contains the correct field equations of General Relativity. Einstein came to know Hilbert's contribution in late November, even before he found his final equations. He immediately claimed that Hilbert had appropriated his results. The dateline of Hilbert's paper, "20 November 1915," however, suggests that it was submitted five days earlier than Einstein's contribution. Did Einstein even copy the correct field equations from Hilbert's paper, as has been argued? This possibility can now definitely be excluded.
The authors of the present paper succeeded in identifying proofs of Hilbert's article that are dated "6 December 1915," that is after the submission of Einstein's conclusive contribution. Their detailed analysis of these proofs has revealed that they contain only an immature version of General Relativity, without the explicit field equations. These equations must have been inserted only later - after 6 December and before the published version appeared in 1916. Hilbert was, so the authors argue, still deeply ingrained in wrong assumptions about the physical meaning of his formalism, asssumptions which Einstein had meanwhile painfully overcome. Einstein can hence definitively be freed from the charge of plagiarism.
Hilbert's contribution, on the other hand, cannot even be considered as an independent alternative discovery of the field equations of General Relativity. Clearly, before he published the final version of his article, he must have seen Einstein's conclusive paper. If Hilbert had only altered the dateline of this paper to the date when he inserted the correct equations into the proofs no later priority discussion could have arisen.
Although disputes about priority and plagiarism can be crucially important to working scientists, they are not necessarily a key issue in the history of science. Historians of science are often less interested in who made an important new discovery but rather in how new insights become possible. In the case of Einstein's and Hilbert's struggle for establishing the field equations of a new, relativistic theory of gravitation the situation is, however, different since the approaches taken by the two scientists were dramatically distinct: Whereas Einstein combined mathematical strategies with a search for physical meaning, Hilbert very much relied on the power of his superior mathematical formalism. Clearly, in this case, the who of the discovery tells indeed much about the how.
Since 1907 Einstein had attempted to carefully reconcile, step by step, tentative mathematical formulations of his heuristic goal to formulate a relativistic theory of gravitation with the then available physical knowledge. Hilbert, on the other hand, had only begun to work on General Relativity in the second half of 1915. He boldly aimed from the beginning at an axiomatic foundation of physics and at a kind of world formula, unifying gravitation with electromagnetism. This approach caused the wrong impression that the field equations of General Relativity could be found by pure mathematical reasoning.
The results reported in the article in Science are an outcome of an international research project dedicated to the history of General Relativity. The project is centered at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and has produced in the last years several new insights into the development of this theory.

To be fair I looked up a http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/physics/pdf/0504/0504179.pdf [Broken]; from the abstract:

It took eight years after Einstein announced the basic physical ideas behind the
relativistic gravity theory before the proper mathematical formulation of general relativity
was mastered. The efforts of the greatest physicist and of the greatest mathematician of
the time were involved and reached a breathtaking concentration during the last month of
the work.
Recent controversy, raised by a much publicized 1997 reading of Hilbert’s proofsheets
of his article of November 1915, is also discussed.

This paper cites an earlier work on Hilbert's December 1915 proof by Tilman Sauer. Fome the abstract of that paper:

Hilbert's paper on ``The Foundations of Physics (First Communication),'' is now primarily known for its parallel publication of essentially the same gravitational field equations of general relativity which Einstein published in a note on ``The Field Equations of Gravitation,'' five days later, on November 25, 1915. An intense correspondence between Hilbert and Einstein in the crucial month of November 1915, furthermore, confronts the historian with a case of parallel research and with the associated problem of reconstructing the interaction between Hilbert and Einstein at that time.
Previous assessments of these issues have recently been challenged by Leo Corry, J\"urgen Renn, and John Stachel who draw attention to a hitherto unnoticed first set of proofs for Hilbert's note. These proofs bear a printer's stamp of December 6 and display substantial differences to the published version. By focussing on the consequences of these findings for the reconstruction of Einstein's path towards general relativity, a number of questions about Hilbert's role in the episode, however, are left open. To what extent did Hilbert react to Einstein? What were Hilbert's research concerns in his note, and how did they come to overlap with Einstein's to some extent in the fall of 1915? How did Hilbert and Einstein regard each other and their concurrent activities at the time? What did Hilbert hope to achieve, and what, after all, did he achieve?
With these questions in mind I discuss in this paper Hilbert's first note on the ``Foundations of Physics,'' its prehistory and characteristic features, and, for heuristic purposes, I do so largely from Hilbert's perspective

Now from a reading of these papers I reach the following conclusions

1) The two men were in close communication, so what one discovered was quickly known to the other, without waiting for publication. This was not a hostile standoff like Newton/Leibniz.

2) Hilbert published a derivation of the field equations from a covariant action a few days before Einstein published his covariant field equations, but analysis of the December 1916 proof sheets of Hilbert's subsequent paper on the subject, Hilbert as late as December did not believe the equations he had derived were complete. Einstein had a few weeks earlier used a noncovariant version of the equations, the entwurf equations, to derive the perihelion motion of Mercury, and he had communicated this result to Hilbert. Hilbert therefore seems to have believed that he had to deform his equations to make them match the entwurf equations, and he introduced an additional four equations in the December proofsheet, for this purpose. So it's hard to give him clean credit for the field equations OR the covariance. On the other hand, Einstein did not derive his equations, and the trace term he inserted, although he had found out how to make it covariant, was unnecessary, due to the Bianchi Identities, which I repeat, neither man was aware of at that moment. I would appreciate your citation for the claim that Hilbert knew the Bianchi Identities early. My statement that Emmy Noether rediscovered them a year or two later is based on an article in Mathematical Intelligencer which is no longer in my possession (I lost some material when I moved three years ago).

If Einstein copied these ideas before they were generally accepted and long before they were verified by experiment, one has to conclude that Einstein was the most brilliant copy cat in the history of physics.

Also, Neopolitan's first post is a very good point. Juan interpreted it as an 'ad-hominem', but I think it is a very reasonable call.

I have read AE's 1905 article, and various works from Poincare. As far as I'm concerned, AE's main contribution (regarding this) is to go from the two postulates all the way to Lorentz Transformations (LT), hence firmly establishing them as a direct consequence from those two simple ideas. Although Poincare mentioned the postulates, and although the LT and other equations were around, he did not establish the connection.

As for the postulates themselves, I do not think you can reasonable argue that they were "plagiarized". The talk about the aether and the fact that Maxwell's equations are not galilean-invariant were both out in plain sight. When attempting to put together a new dynamics (which, in itself, requires at least a good ammount of courage), you had to decide between absolute and relative motion, and whether Maxwell equations (with their prediction of a constant value for c) were to be modified.

The fact that two intelligent men agreed on what assumptions to make is just natural.

Also, one thing is to mention ideas that seem correct and to say that they should be the basis of things to come (as in your quote from Poincare), and a very different one to actually roll your sleeves and follow through with what they imply. Poincare's work was definitely important, but regarding relativity, it was AE who found how LT arise from seemingly unrelated principles.

To be fair I looked up a http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/physics/pdf/0504/0504179.pdf [Broken]; from the abstract:

This paper cites an earlier work on Hilbert's December 1915 proof by Tilman Sauer. Fome the abstract of that paper:

Now from a reading of these papers I reach the following conclusions

1) The two men were in close communication, so what one discovered was quickly known to the other, without waiting for publication. This was not a hostile standoff like Newton/Leibniz.

2) Hilbert published a derivation of the field equations from a covariant action a few days before Einstein published his covariant field equations, but analysis of the December 1916 proof sheets of Hilbert's subsequent paper on the subject, Hilbert as late as December did not believe the equations he had derived were complete. Einstein had a few weeks earlier used a noncovariant version of the equations, the entwurf equations, to derive the perihelion motion of Mercury, and he had communicated this result to Hilbert. Hilbert therefore seems to have believed that he had to deform his equations to make them match the entwurf equations, and he introduced an additional four equations in the December proofsheet, for this purpose. So it's hard to give him clean credit for the field equations OR the covariance. On the other hand, Einstein did not derive his equations, and the trace term he inserted, although he had found out how to make it covariant, was unnecessary, due to the Bianchi Identities, which I repeat, neither man was aware of at that moment. I would appreciate your citation for the claim that Hilbert knew the Bianchi Identities early. My statement that Emmy Noether rediscovered them a year or two later is based on an article in Mathematical Intelligencer which is no longer in my possession (I lost some material when I moved three years ago).

As already explained on http://canonicalscience.blogspot.co...ity-theory.html [Broken] the Science article is wrong, just a new attempt to falsify the history maintaining Einstein myth intact.

The authors of the present paper succeeded in identifying proofs of Hilbert's article that are dated "6 December 1915," that is after the submission of Einstein's conclusive contribution. Their detailed analysis of these proofs has revealed that they contain only an immature version of General Relativity, without the explicit field equations.

curiously those so-serious historians omited to say to readers that mean "detailed analysis of these proofs has revealed that [lack] the explicit field equations."

a priori, one read the popular misticism and appears that lack of field equations on Hilbert recently discovered paper mean that Einstein is pionner, but curiously the so-called serious historians omited to say that field equations lack because were cut off by anyone.

That is the so-called irrefutable proofs were mutilated by anyone in an atempt to falsify again history of relativity as has been noted by several historians (e.g. see reference 12). your above link to Ivan T. Todorov paper also contain some information on that. The manipulation of Journal Science is also evident from several sources.

Curious, really curious!

See my page for a criticism on why Science article is misleading.

Now your conclusions

1) The two men were in close communication. Yes, this is the reason that priority issues to Einstein or poor still, the popular version of that Einstein developed GR alone is completely wrong. As explained in the above link, the popular version of the history of relativity contains many imprecisions and flagranty false statements.

2) Hilbert published a complete form of GR (field equations more the correct lagrangian containing the full metric, see the Wald). Moreover Hilbert obtained the definition of the metric tensor that is used in practical computations and also worked in a generalized formulation containing also EM effects.

Moreover, the historic (but unpopular between physicists pro-Einstein) version saying the Hilbert obtained 5 days before is not correct. I shown that was at least nine days before.

That you say about Hilbert did not obtained correct equations is not correct. A detailed analisys of article of 1915 shows that Hilbert had obtained the correct field equations of GR. See references cited on my web document.

Yes, there is still polemic around the mutilated proof, moreover, a recently recovered letter from Einstein proves that Hilbert obtained the correct GR equations before Einstein did. The interpretation that Hilbert would modify the equations was shown false by the own Einstein. Hilbert does not copied to Einstein.

Curiously is just the inverse, during decades, Einstein failed for obtaining GR. Before knowing Hilbert work, Einstein just failed in two consecutive papers submitted for publication, only when received a copy of Hilbert work, Einstein obtained the correct equation in just a week. A week mirabilis?

The letter, i reproduced in the web page also shows that Einstein did not say the true regarding priority issues and this is the reason that Hilbert claimed that was Einstein who obtained GR (see correspondence). Moreover, in a posterior paper where Einstein published the correct version of GR, Einstein forgot even mention to Hilbert! which offers and excellent viewpoint of kind of person that Einstein was. This offers little doubt on that also in SR, Einstein was not sincere.

You say about Bianchi identy is wrong as already said because Pais book was written before modern data (e.g. the recently dicovered paper by Hilbert). Of course Einstein did not know, but Hilbert did. In fact, it was Hilbert who obtained before Wey in 1917 and used for deriving his field equations of GR in 1915.

And I repeat again, I already talked of that on the web document, including a reference, but your appear to reply my comments witout reading which offers an idea of with is the tone of this post: direct attack to any idea against Einstein myth.

If Einstein copied these ideas before they were generally accepted and long before they were verified by experiment, one has to conclude that Einstein was the most brilliant copy cat in the history of physics.

Unfortunately, previous ellipse "hahaha" and other irrelevant claims by that guy are not sufficient for historical research. Look as superfitial the above ellipse comment is from the title of one of links provided by SelfAdjoint (that of Max Planck Society)

Einstein Freed from Charge of Plagiarism

Unfortunately, that Research News was based in the already discredited old work of Science 1998. Modern specialized works that i cited shown that Einstein plagiarized to Hilbert as also show the detailed cronology [16] and the letter of Einstein to Hilbert that i reproduced.

Moreover i am obtaining new data. For example, i already shown that Einstein postualtes of SR are literally copied from a previous work of Poincaré and that Einstein did not say the true on his writting to Seelig.

Still i thought that Einstein learned Lorentz from Poincaré works, but this is may be false. Einstein said that read only a paper of Lorentz of 1895. But curiously, Einstein use the same notation in his 1905paper that Lorenzt used in a 1904 paper containing basic mathematical machinery of SR.

Of course, believers can interpret that the copy of notation was just due to azar :rofl:

ahrkron said:

Also, Neopolitan's first post is a very good point. Juan interpreted it as an 'ad-hominem', but I think it is a very reasonable call.

Yes, i agree, Neopolitan first post is good if and only if it was well-based. eliminating all paraghraps on internet surfing, the title, other tings and the words

For my money, anyone who is looking for a General Grand Unified Theory based on Genesis 1-8 is going to have to be selective about what science he will accept and what he will attempt to refute irrespective of the evidence for or against.

which imply previous censoring of Dr Hermann. Curiously Neopolitan offers no similar claims for some others authors. Would be highly interesting read thar Neopolitan says about M. Kaku idea of that we do not observe aliens because they used ST for travel to a parallel universe and therefore the absence of aliens is a proof that ST is correct

ahrkron said:

I have read AE's 1905 article, and various works from Poincare. As far as I'm concerned, AE's main contribution (regarding this) is to go from the two postulates all the way to Lorentz Transformations (LT), hence firmly establishing them as a direct consequence from those two simple ideas. Although Poincare mentioned the postulates, and although the LT and other equations were around, he did not establish the connection.

Perhaps you read not the sufficient. Poincaré before 1905 claimed explicitely that all the content of Lorentz and others could be derived from his relativity postulate only without additional asumptions of Lorentz initial work. also here Einstein was not pionnering nor original. Moreover, as already said own Einstein derivation of LT from "his" two postulates is full of mathematical errors and implicit asumptions.

ahrkron said:

As for the postulates themselves, I do not think you can reasonable argue that they were "plagiarized". The talk about the aether and the fact that Maxwell's equations are not galilean-invariant were both out in plain sight. When attempting to put together a new dynamics (which, in itself, requires at least a good ammount of courage), you had to decide between absolute and relative motion, and whether Maxwell equations (with their prediction of a constant value for c) were to be modified.

If Einstein had aknowledged or cited to Poincaré like the true originator of the postulates of SR, then nobody would use the word. Moreover, he said that newer read Poincaré when did, offering a "proof" that plaguiarized Poincaré relativistic theory.

That you say is incorrect. Poincaré shown before Einstein annus mirabilis that Maxwell equations would remain intact and this is the reason that he talked of new mechanics nor new electrodynamics. Poincaré also explciitly said that one would abandon the aether before Einstein suggestion. The absence of simultaneity and even a procedure for sincronizing clokcs (basically that of Einstein was also obtained by Poincaré y Einstein "copied"). You would read modern version of the history.

Poincaré (1902)

Absolute space does not exist. We only perceive relative motions.

Absolute time does not exist.

ahrkron said:

The fact that two intelligent men agreed on what assumptions to make is just natural.

No problem, if were true. Einstein copied work of other withou citing and after when accusated of plagiarism said that newer read to these authors whis is false.

Moreover, even if all that modern data were not discovered or published (Hilbert paper newer discovered, etc.), one would call the relativity theory of Poincaré, Lorentz, and Einstein instead of the heavy marketing that was done around Einstein figure alone.

ahrkron said:

Also, one thing is to mention ideas that seem correct and to say that they should be the basis of things to come (as in your quote from Poincare), and a very different one to actually roll your sleeves and follow through with what they imply. Poincare's work was definitely important, but regarding relativity, it was AE who found how LT arise from seemingly unrelated principles.

Poincaré developed a quasi-complete form of relativity. He did many physical asumptions of importance and derived almost all of formulas from first principles including the four momentum, four force, and relativistic mechanics, LT covariance of Maxwell equations and constancy of c and his limiting of v, an extension of LT to any force even before Einstein submited his paper on electrodynamics, etc. Poincaré was very clear.

Curiously, Einstein "more physical" version of relativity theory is not used in modern approaches and students learn the "most mathematical and sophisticated" group-theoretical oriented Poincaré work.

I am not saying that Poincaré alone did the SR, but i am claiming that atribution to Einstein alone is an injustice.

I also say that Einstein copied work of others (e.g. Einstein postulates are a direct copy Poincaré postulates without doubt). On LT, i already said that Einstein derivation is so fallacious like his derivation of E=mc^2.

Again: you can hardly talk of "plagiarism" related to such well-known possibilities at the time.

Also: I did not said that AE showed ME invariance wrt the LT. I said that his 1905 paper makes a clear link from two very simple (almost common-sense) statements to the LT. This is in itself quite an achievement.

For my money, anyone who is looking for a General Grand Unified Theory based on Genesis 1-8 is going to have to be selective about what science he will accept and what he will attempt to refute irrespective of the evidence for or against.

Juan R. said

which imply previous censoring of Dr Hermann.

Should we understand from here that you trust Dr. Hermann's statements about physics issues? What about his Genesis-based attempts at a GUT? What about Intelligent Design? (in support of which he has published a book)

That you say about Hilbert did not obtained correct equations is not correct. A detailed analisys of article of 1915 shows that Hilbert had obtained the correct field equations of GR. See references cited on my web document.

Yes he did that, and then in his December 6 proofsheet he claimed that he had to add four equations to what he had published and once again made them not generally covariant. Your attempt, showing an unscholarly animus against Einstein (it is fair for me to say that since you are so free withaccusations of pro-Einstein predjudice) to draw conclusions from the text alone is unhistorical. We have to understand the mind-set of the players. Hilbert in December 1916 was NOT in posession of the full generally covariant theory, to judge by what he wrote in his proofsheet, in spite of the fact that he had indeed published the correct derivation in November.

The full record shows him trying variuos things, trying to include different materials, and not settling down till January 1916. As far as I am concerned it was not a case of who stole from whom but rather that they both discovered the theory by working together.